BASIC converter chart from 1984

In 1984 the PCW (Personal Computer World) magazine published a poster for converting between various BASIC dialects, here in PNG:

(*) The whole magazine Personal Computer World (1984-09) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Some gent called Clive Sloman converted the table into Excel, Facebook page about the conversion:
BASIC Programming Language | Hey guys, as promised here is an Excel file that contains all the chart details for a pre1984, 1984 and 1985 versions of the Basic Converter Chart | Facebook and copy of the Excel in my Google Drive

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It’s enormous!

The Beeb has *RENAME but it’s strictly a filing system command, usable by BASIC, rather than being a Basic command, and not all filing systems necessarily have it. It’s not so easy to build such a command programmatically, until Basic 4 which offers OSCLI().

I think BBC Basic always allows CLOSE#0 to flush all buffers. I’m not sure if *DISK is in fact always the same - bearing in mind that’s changing the filesystem and not necessarily re-selecting the current one.

The layering in the BBC Micro whereby the MOS is distinct from BASIC and both are distinct from the current filing system is a potential trap for the unwary, and a mistake online can bring pedantic corrections!

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Picture-perfect British understatement there!

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Not all of us use FACEBOOK.
What about basic for the PDP8?

That’s why I included the PNG and a copy of the Excel and a link to the full magazine scan.

The editors of PCW back in 1984 are probably not accepting corrections any more.

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It seems BASIC (M$) at that time jumped from simple, to complex with graphics and floppy
disk. Mainframe BASIC never had that but often matrix math. It looks like Microsoft was the standard
since 8 bit micros were becoming the future, rather than mainframes.

Before MicroSoft was BASIC used
for more than a simple calculator? Games were never permitted on time sharing. The PDP8 did have a few games how ever.

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But remember that Mainframe BASIC and micro BASIC were two very different animals - even though both were called BASIC.

Mainframe BASIC was compiled and didn’t have nearly the resource constraints that 8-bit micros had. Mainframe BASIC was often run on systems that had a full OS and some sort of fast storage.

Micro BASIC was interpreted instead of compiled, had direct access to the hardware, did not run on systems with a full OS (usually) and were very resource constrained - both in memory and storage.

But micro BASIC became the standard simply because it was in front of more people. Most people didn’t have daily access to a mainframe system, but once they purchased their TRS-80 or Commodore PET, they had BASIC at their fingertips 24/7.

From their micro BASIC evolved as the home computer evolved - supporting graphics, floppy drives, hard drives, etc.

Then IBM brought out their PC and that changed everything.

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Yeah, the BASIC started as a “mainframe” timesharing language, how it got cut down to microcomputers, and then popularized by IBM/Microsoft, is a strange story. It kept being offered by “main” and “mini” frame vendors like DEC and HP, and was a “respectable” application development environment.

When I started doing research into the beginnings of BASIC, I saw that Kemeny and Kurtz did not like what Microsoft had done with it and countered it with a product called True BASIC.

But by then, BASIC was waning on the micros with products like Turbo Pascal.

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OS/9 for the 6809 had a nice BASIC,C and PASCAL. How ever it took a 16 bit micro to have the power for better programing languages and a good operating system with ample disk space -
dual floppy , or floppy and fixed disk.

True Basic still exists: https://www.truebasic.com

They also called the Microsoft-butchered minimal BASIC as “street basic”. It is now Windows only, but back in the 1990s it was available for more platforms (well, when more platforms existed).

I would say they made at least one mistake in trying to make TrueBasic a product that came with a price tag. That was never going to work given the marketing gorilla of Microsoft.

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There was also Business BASIC and several other dialects for minis including BASIC-11 for PDP-11, Wang BASIC etc. Some months ago I stumbled on Business BASIC, but I don’t remember why.
Of course they can’t be all included on the chart, mainly for homecomputers

On the theme of “big iron BASICs”, did some archive diving, and here

is Google Drive link to a zip of PDFs, DEC BASIC manuals from 1975 to 2000:

  • 1970 PDP-11 BASIC PROGRAMMING MANUAL
  • 1975 BASIC-PLUS LANGUAGE MANUAL DEC-11-ORBPB-A-D
  • 1984 Basic User’s Guide AA-L335A-TK
  • 1991 BASIC-PLUS-2 AA-JP30B-TK
  • 2000 Compaq BASIC for OpenVMS Alpha and VAX Systems User Manual AA–HY15E–TK (whew)

In 2000 it was already called Compaq Basic, sic transit gloria mundi.

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That all looks rather good - OK if I upload it to the Internet Archive?

Go ahead. Though I think one of those came from there, originally…